


Bonny Mad Boys

by glorious_spoon



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gen, Gore, Horror, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Revenge, The Author Regrets Everything, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 11:00:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20357374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: They let him go afterward. It's both the cruelest and the stupidest thing they could have done.





	Bonny Mad Boys

**Author's Note:**

> Dude, I don't even know. This was inspired by a really upsetting nightmare I had and I wrote 90% of it at like 3AM just to get it out of my head. It is dark and gory and deeply unhappy and I have mixed feelings about sharing it at all, but, uh.
> 
> Also, I haven't read the Shadowhunter Chronicles or anything else by CC, so the Unseelie Court in this fic has no relation to anything along those lines that she's written. If I have any inspiration at all for them, it's Mercedes Lackey's Elves on the Road series.
> 
> Title from 'Tom O'Bedlam'

I.

Shadowhunter stoicism is impressive, but even it has a breaking point.

Eventually, Alec screams.

II.

They let him go afterward, and that might actually be the worst part.

(It’s not.)

(The worst part is the smell. The worst part is how he _remembers_ this particular smell, the burnt-copper scent of blood when there’s so much of it that it soaks the ground beneath his feet red, the slaughterhouse stink of it. The worst part of it is how familiar it all is. Like the blood and death and horror of his father’s legacy is sunk into his bones so deeply that he’ll never escape it no matter how far he runs and how long he lives. No matter how sweetly, gently, desperately he loves, all he can create is ruin.)

III.

He can’t recognize Alec’s face anymore beneath the blood and exposed bone. His body is torn open like a gutted fish but his hands are still intact, resting on the lush green grass that’s only a little trampled by the hooves and claws and feet of the Court. His wedding ring glints on one finger. Magnus gags at the sight but he can’t turn his head away. He can’t even close his eyes.

(He doesn’t want to. He’s never wanted to look away from Alec. And even now—

Even now—

Someone needs to bear witness to this.)

IV.

He screams until his throat bleeds, but his magic holds no meaning here, not when his hands are bound with rose vines and the taste of flowers and rot is on his tongue. Thorns prick his skin but he can barely feel their sting.

And then they let him go, the glade and the music and Alexander’s body--his Alexander--melting away in the morning sun and leaving him bloody and weeping and alone in an empty city lot.

(A message, they said. A warning.)

It’s both the cruelest and the stupidest thing they could possibly have done. Legend says that you can never find a faerie ring twice. That if you’re fortunate enough to be released alive from the deadly, wild dance of the Unseelie Court, you’ll never come across it again no matter how hard you search. That if you lost something there--if you lost someone there--it’s better just to let them go.

Legend has fucking nothing on Magnus Bane.

V.

Here’s one fact about the Unseelie Court: they’re an ancient power in the Downworld, and even the heir presumptive to the throne of Edom can’t take them on alone in a contest of sheer strength on their home soil. If he could, they never never would have dared to keep him for any span of time at all.

(And Alec. And Alec, who was only ever there because of Magnus. Because—)

Here’s another: there are certain rules they have to abide by whether they like it or not. Certain laws that hold sway over their flesh and bones.

VI.

Demons aren’t known for their grasp of loopholes. They prefer to do their business in blood and fire, battles of brute force that leave the land around them scorched and smoking. They prefer to rain down destruction on their enemies and if they perish, they perish in the same hellfire that made them.

Warlocks have a little more subtlety than that.

Magnus still burns, though. A column of blue fire encases his body as he crosses the parking lot toward a hidden little piece of green land with a ring of mushrooms and a lovely little brook and the persistent sweet stink of rotting flesh like roadkill baking in the summer heat. His footsteps leave puddles of melted asphalt in his wake. Heat rolls off of him like a forge, and when he steps into the grass, flames spread out around him like ripples on a lake.

It’s not a weapon that he pulls out when the earth splits around him and the Unseelie Court pours out into the strip of green, which is too small to hold their numbers but manages it anyway. There’s a ring of white mushrooms binding them away from the mundane world, and the smell of rotting flesh is stronger now. Bones curve palely amongst the lush grass.

He wonders if any of them are Alec’s--

_“I thought you would be wiser than this,”_ the King tells him, in a voice that buzzes and grates like black flies and rusted machinery. _“How much more can you afford to lose, warlock?”_

“Nothing,” Magnus tells him calmly. He feels beyond fury, transported to some still distant place. It’s not completely true. He has other people he loves, other people under his protection. Other _vulnerabilities._ There would have been no point to any of this otherwise.

They knew him well enough to understand that much, but there were a few details they missed. Sentimentality, after all, has never been a hallmark of the Unseelie Court.

VII.

It isn’t a weapon that he pulls from the bag over his shoulder. It’s a fiddle, handsome and gleaming red in the midday sunlight that’s frozen above them.

The Unseelie Court has laws they must follow, and one of those is this: if the dancing ring is summoned, the dancers cannot rest for as long as the musician plays.

The King’s eyes widen with sudden fearful understanding as Magnus sets it to his chin and begins to play.

VIII.

There have been plenty of mortals over the years who’ve tried to use that to their advantage. A few have even succeeded; clever mortals especially are amusing to the Elder-King. The rest are bones beneath the green grass. There aren’t many who can outlast the strength of the entire Court. Eventually, they tire. Eventually, they cease to be amusing, and the flesh is peeled away from their bones to feed the Court and the dancing ring.

Magnus isn’t mortal, though, and he doesn’t much care what happens to him as long as he can tear the Court to shreds along with him. Death, at this point, seems vastly preferable to every other option, especially if the other options include spending the rest of his unending life remembering what Alec’s final screams sounded like.

He’s not much of a musician, but he doesn’t need to be. He can play well enough to carry a tune, a skill picked up centuries past in some brothel or bar-room and practiced idly in the years intervening. He can play well enough to force the Court to dance, and he does. Feet and hooves and claws hit the grass in time, the dancers whirling past.

IX.

_“How long do you think you can keep this up?”_ the King hisses, but there’s fear in his pale eyes as he too is dragged into the dance.

X.

Magnus plays, and the Court dances, trapped in the melody of his fingers, the shudder of his wrists, the screaming grief bleeding into the instrument in his hands and spinning madness into the air. The Court isn’t meant to dance beneath the light of the sun, but the sun was high when he summoned them, and time holds no sway here.

He plays, and the court dances. His fingers bleed and his chin is raw and he can no longer make sense of the melody that he’s creating, and still he plays.

The court dances on bleeding feet, and still he plays.

They begin to fall, and still he plays.

_“Release us,”_ pleads the King, his feet moving and his face a rictus of agony. _“Release us and we’ll grant your heart’s desire.”_

“I want my lover back,” Magnus murmurs against the shuddering vibration of the fiddle. It’s too quiet to be heard over the sounds of the music and the weeping fae, the vicious, mad lament of a dying Court. It doesn’t matter, anyway. The fae can kill as casually as breathing, but they have no power to raise the dead. “My husband, my heart, I want him back. I want Alexander.”

The music winds faster and faster, no longer propelled entirely by Magnus’s fingers and hands. The blistering sunlight boils the flesh from their bones and their screams sound a discordant harmony to the sound of his fiddle.

The King falls, and with him the remainder of the Court.

Above them the sky splits. Magnus’s fingers falter on the bow. The music ends, and the world shatters around him into blackness.


End file.
